A/N: Thanks for reviews! So it turns out the update emails weren't sending so make sure you read chapter 11 first. This picks up right where Chapter 11 left off. Happy Reading!

Hyde's Bedroom

4:37 am

That Same Early Morning

"Steven."

He hears her whisper, her breath warming the nape of his neck. "Is it light out yet?"

"No, it's still dark."

He lets out a groan and rolls into her chest, eyes squeezed shut. "Go back to sleep, please."

"I have to tell you something." She slips further down under the blanket on the cot, kissing his forehead.

"Is anybody dying?" He mutters but she shakes her head no. "Bleeding or even on fire." Again he feels her shake her head. "Then it can wait til the sun comes up."

"No, I feel guilty so I need to tell you now."

"Well talk fast then cause I want to go back to sleep before I fully wake up." He opens his eyes as Jackie shifts out from underneath his resting head.

"Eric and Donna know about us." That catches his attention and he promptly sits up in bed. "Donna told me but Eric doesn't know that we know he knows."

"And they've just kept quiet?" That makes little sense to him. Eric isn't one to keep sarcastic remarks to himself and Donna has always been a little intrusive.

"I told Donna that we didn't want to share, we talked for a bit and she agreed to leave us be."

"Well that explains Forman acting all weird. So should we just stop hiding then?"

"Well, I don't care about Fez but I think we need to sit Michael down and tell him."

"I don't want to do that."

"He's your friend you owe him a little respect, don't you think?"

"After all the crap I've listened to from him this last year, I owe him nothing."

"Steven." Her whine should be trademarked. It seems to defeat him pretty easily.

"Fine. Should we do it now? March over to the Kelso residence at the crack of dawn. Huh? It's not like he has a lot on his plate right about now."

"No, not right now, but I think I'm ready." She leans in slowly and kisses his lips lightly at first but he doesn't let her pull away so quickly. "I want everyone to know that you're mine."

"Alright, so we stop hiding in the morning but until then you must let me sleep." He kisses her and pulls her down deep under the covers with him. He closes his eyes in hopes of getting even just one more hour of sleep but his mind can't seem to settle down.

Is he anxious? Why would he be anxious? He's been waiting to have the opportunity to kiss her anytime he wants and now he can, and he will. So why does he have a feeling that something bad is quickly impending?

He's finding himself almost consumed by the burning desire to hold her and kiss her and talk and just be near her. Every word he confides in her breaks down walls within him. This is a good thing. He thinks to himself on a repetitive cycle, this is a good thing, this is a good thing, this is a good thing… until he fell back to sleep.

Forman's Basement

10:00 am

"Laverne is so annoying, why does Shirley put up with her crap?" Jackie shakes her head at the television, some shows were just so annoying.

"If she bothers you so much I'd be happy to channel." Eric stands to reach the knob on the T.V. set.

"Hey, don't touch that I'm watching this." She smacks his arm away and Donna chuckles quietly looking up from her magazine.

"Jackie! Where's my left boot?" The three turn in the direction of Hyde's room. He's standing in the doorway shaking his right boot at her. "Where is it?"

"How should I know?"

"Cause usually when my things go missing it's because you're tossing them out."

Jackie rolls her eyes at him, "Don't be so grumpy with me and I bought you those boots."

"Well I didn't get much sleep last night so I'm sorry I'm a little grumpy."

"I'm sure it just got kicked into a corner somewhere." She thinks to herself for a second as Eric and Donna just share a look of amusement. "Okay so last night remember I took your boots off and tossed them behind me." She runs into his room and leans over a box of christmas ornaments. "Aha there you go." She hands him his boot and kisses his cheek, "happy now?"

"Yes dear."

He grasps onto her shoulder to steady his shaky balance and slips on both shoes. He lets his arm slip down to her waist and he guides her to his chair, sitting down with her on his lap.

"Sooo… we're pretending this is just normal now?" Eric shakes his finger at the couple.

"Not pretending, just is, man." He pats her hip.

"Alright then," he smirks, "so she took off your boots huh? You like it on the bottom?"

Steven glares at Eric with an intensity that could kill. He frogs his scrawny shoulder. "From time to time, my girl can't crush me, I have the necessary muscles to lift her."

"That's enough out of both of you." Donna tosses her magazine on the table. "Okay, now you two have to talk to Kelso. You can't pull this 'pretend like nothing happened, everything is business as usual' crap on him or someone's going to get hurt."

"We know that, we talked all about it this morning."

"Okay I just think that-"

"Donna, don't worry about us. We're good."

Forman's Driveway

3:37 pm

Jackie watches as Michael shoots a free throw without any care in the world. "Michael, there's no way Brooke said that you're off the hook. She probably said that she was going to take everything that you have and all that you're worth, you irresponsible bastard."

He grins shaking his head, "no, she definitely said off the hook. I am one handsome and lucky kid."

Hyde rolls his eyes behind his sunglasses, "so that's it? It's like this thing with Brooke never happened?"

"Yeah, wait, no. I'm still going to have a kid out there, but my life's back to normal. Sorta. I should be happy right now, I am happy right now." He convinces himself but Hyde and Jackie feel slightly sick to their stomachs.

"Well, you shouldn't be." Jackie jumps off the bumper of the vista cruiser.

"Hey, I don't need a lecture from you right now. I went to Brooke and tried to talk to her but she said it was cool. Which is awesome because this could completely ruin my life."

Jackie watches Steven's face pinch up in disgust. A child ruining a parents life, yeah that story sounds familiar. "Right, children grow up without dads all the time. Like Steven."

"Well, I don't want him ending up like Hyde. Hair all frizzed out with angry thoughts." He flinches at the fist hitting his shoulder, "ow! and violent too."

"Kelso, you know what you should do. But you won't because you're too much of a coward."

"You know what? It's real easy to talk about the right thing to do, when it's not your life." Kelso stomps away unable to take anymore verbal bashing from the experts of parental abandonment.

"Aw, Steven you're so sensitive to this cause your daddy abandoned you too, why is that so foxy?"

"Hey, why don't we go down to my room," he wraps his arm around her shoulder, "and I can tell you about the time my mother got so loaded on mouthwash, she lost our rent money at the track."

She laughs, how does he make painful memories so comical. Laugh at my pain, "As fun as that sounds, I haven't had lunch yet and I'm starving."

He kisses her temple, "Hub?" she nods.

Outside the Hub

4:08 pm

They had gotten distracted. Not even able to make it around the corner to the entrance, he has her pinned to the bricks. Her skin radiates incredible warmth, and the scent of her, the perfume on her neck and the intoxicating aroma of her hair, it all made the blood rush at his temples.

He kisses her harshly even as her fingers play with his belt buckle. She pulls her head back, "softly, love," she whispers out breathily. She relaxes in his embrace, mingling into him. He makes her comfortable, she loses all will to care who sees her pressed up against a public building with a brooding rebel attached to her lips.

The only announcement of the intruder's arrival is a slight dampening of sounds as his attention internalizes. Betrayal rings painful in his ears. His eyes focus in on the vision before him, a sight not quiet for sore eyes. Knuckles turn white. He follows his friends hand as it slides over the curves of a familiar raven haired siren.

A soft whisper of running feet grows intensely louder, incoming, moving in their direction. He turns. Greeting him is a friendly yet flustered face. Kelso's body crashes into him. Both collapse, taken down to the ground. The cement of the curb bruises his shoulder blade. He can almost hear the creaking of his bones as he worms his way out from under the weight of Michael Kelso.

Hyde pulls him to his feet, almost tearing the collar… he heard the slight rasp of ripping fabric. Kelso's arms swing about in fists failing to make any sort of contact with skin. "Would you cut it out." He grumbles from deep in his throat.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?!" Anger doesn't allow him to wait for an answer. Drawing his arm back, Kelso drives his fist into Hyde's jawline. Head flying back as his eyes lock to the sky, Hyde stumbles backwards. His hand comes to cup his face and his eyes glare in shock.

"Hey! Stop it, stop it right now." Jackie slides in between the boys placing a hand on either one of their chests. "What is wrong with you two? Michael sit on the curb, I'll deal with you in a second." He ignores her for a moment but the insistence in the pissed off stance of her face tells him that it may not be the best idea. He plops down.

Jackie turns her back on Michael, "Oh Steven," she reaches up to examine the bruising with a light touch of her fingertips. "See, this is what I wanted to avoid."

"Can we argue about this later? I'm fine, this moron isn't as strong as he'd like to believe."

"Yeah I'm sure you've experienced worse. Now, sit." Steven just looks Jackie in the eyes as though she were speaking a foreign language. "Sit." He rolls his eyes but abides by her commands. "Look, I'm going to go inside and get a soda and you two need to stay here and talk this out." She heads towards the Hub's entrance but hesitates by the doorway, "don't you dare start fighting again, I mean it."

They watch her disappear into the building and the silence grows heavy. "We've gotta talk, man, or I'll be staring at the business end of a hissy fit."

"Yeah Jackie's one crazy chatterbox." Kelso's laughs to himself quietly. "Man, what the hell? How could you do this to me?"

"Why do you care so much? You and Jackie broke up over a year ago. You've moved on, you have Brooke and that feeble-minded bun in the oven."

"But still it's Jackie, man! You don't mess around with a friends ex, that's the rules."

"I'm not just messing around with her! Okay? I love her, I'm in love with her! God damn it!" The words fall out of his mouth with little to no effort before he can even stop himself. Zen is completely forgotten.

"You're what?"

"Nothing." He places his head in his lap and grumbles.

"How long has this been going on?" Kelso inquires with a sick feeling deep in his gut.

"Since last summer. When you were in California."

His eyes widen and his jaw drops, "since California! Me and Jackie were still together!"

"No you weren't, you were busy sleeping your way through all the random beach trash. Kelso, man, please just move on." He's pleading with him at this point. "You're my friend, please."

A silence lasts an awkwardly long time, if this were a movie Kelso would be expected to come up with something heartfelt and meaningful. "I guess I can back off, I mean I am going to be pretty busy with Brooke and the baby, so yeah, I guess."

"Man, you are so screwed."

"I know!"

Forman's Basement

The Circle

7:18 pm

"Well, Fez, congratulations on your green card. Remember though, this is still America and you still look foreign, so don't expect to be treated equally." Jackie was surprised to hear earlier that immigration found no fraud with his relationship with whorey Laurie. Although, they kinda make sense in a weird perverted way.

"Well, I'm going to become America's sexiest singing cowboy. Howdy, ladies. Meet Pepe."

"So Brooke thinks I'm not good enough to be a dad, it really hurts. But I think in a couple of days when I start to heal, I'm going to be really psyched Donna let me squeeze her ass."

"You let him squeeze your ass?" Eric turns to Donna inquiring an explanation.

"As a friend, I was comforting him. He's had a rough week, Eric." Donna passes the joint clockwise around the circle.

Hyde takes the joint between his thumb and finger placing it between his lips. Inhaling the sweet intoxicating smoke, his eyes flutter shut behind his glasses. He exhales smoke rings, one through another. He takes one more inhale getting lost in the high. He turns to his right and finds her face already looking back at him, watching with intrigue. He leans over, his lips brushing her cheek.

The slightest touch sends shivers through her body. His lips were on hers before he has a chance to exhale the smoke from his lungs. Smoke seeps between her lips, she breathes it in as she gracefully transitions to sit on his lap, wrapping her arms around his neck.

She steals his breath and gives it back. Strong hands slip under her thighs lifting her up. Gentle yet demanding. He hoists her up easily, bare legs wrapping around his waist. His face has that bit of scruff that brushes on her face but she doesn't care. He feels wonderful. They disappear into his bedroom and the door slams closed.

"What in good god's name was that abomination?" Fez stares off at the closed door.

Kelso takes the joint off the table. "Oh Fez, you never know anything. This has been going on for over a year. Who's closet have you been hiding in?"

A/N: They're out in the open! And Kelso is doing okay. Please review.